Menu

Ladies Fight Night – a unique promotion from Poland

I had the pleasure to join the third gala organized by Ladies Fight Night – a promotion focusing on female fighters!!

It’s something totally unique in Poland, and from what I hear also in Europe.

The promotion organized a mix of K1 and MMA fights, with a little surprise this time – the fight of the night was a Muay Thai full rules 5-round fight!

I already enjoyed this kind of “mix” of styles when I went to the FEN10 gala in Warsaw in March – it’s another young Polish promotion that features K1 and MMA fights. So this was not something totally new, but I just LOVE that LFN made it into an all-female promotion!

The thing adding to the uniqueness of the promotion is that their galas are free – of course you need to get an invite and this is when it gets a bit tricky 😉 The fighters get to distribute invites to their people, so if you’re not close to any of them, you need to find another way to get in. The good thing is, if you’re a plain joe like myself you still have a chance to join by winning a drawing. So I won an invite and was thrilled to go!!!

The gala is free because of the heavy support by sponsors! There are A LOT of sponsors and the gala was organized extremely professionally! They are doing it for the third time and already on par with the biggest promotions in Poland! I’m really impressed! 🙂

There was music, video clips, a lot of screens, so you could see the action wherever you were seated, lots of lights and the best thing – you felt like you were sitting ringside!

The third gala – the FeMMAgeddon was organized in one of the biggest fair centers in Warsaw – the EXPO XXI. It’s a lot smaller than stadiums, but for a young rising promotion I think it was an appropriate and perfect place! It was also their first gala in Warsaw, the two event before were held in Łódź and were apparently smaller from what I know.

The main card was also streamed live on their website and aparently the numbers were really good!

I was also capturing a bit of the gala on my Snapchat, if you’re interested add me mitzzove – you still have a few hours to watch my story! 😀

The fight card

There were 11 fights, I couldn’t get my hands on any official fight card, so I can’t write down the names of all the fighters that participated 😦

There were more K1 than MMA fights and it was structured more or less like this: 2-3 K1 fights, 1 MMA fight.

I recognized a lot of the fighters from the Polish kickboxing and Muay Thai amateur scene and some of them performed incredibly good, some not so well.

Not all fights went the full distance, there was an impressive submission by a Brazilian fighter (I don’t have her name!! 😦 I’ll try to add it later), there were also TKOs and really incredible turns of events.

The fight I was most interested in was Sylwia Juśkiewicz vs Magda Mróz. Both are young fighters, Sylwia trains in MMA, is 18 and already fights pro! She’s a young phenom that drives the whole LFN promotion. I was a bit sceptical, thinking she was only a hype, because I saw Magda Mróz in a few amateur fights and she always wiped out all her weight class. They were fighting at 52kg I think and it was a K1 fight, Magda fights Muay Thai in her amateur carreer.

Well, what can I say, I was positively shocked by Sylwia’s performance. She has great techinque and a lot of strength behind it. Add to it a tenacity that makes a fighter unique and you have a UFC-level prospect! Really, seeing her fight I felt like watching the top girls in UFC! I hope she will make it big one day and I’m sure she would have a lot more difficult road to get exposure if it wasn’t for the Ladies Fight Night promotion!! Of course I’m sad that Magda didn’t win, but she stood her ground despite being counted twice in the last round.

The main fight

The fight of the night was Judyta Niepogoda vs Magda Gusztab and it was a Muay Thai fight in 60kg.

I know Marta Gusztab as a solid Muay Thai fighter who has some professional experience and I loved her style! She lost by split decision 😦 But for me, she won!

A lot of people don’t get yet what’s so different between kickboxing and Muay Thai and for me this fight showed it great. Judyta has a more kickboxing style and in contrast to Marta who was steadily finding her rythm and not jumping around like you know from real Thai fights!

I was cheering for Marta and I was sitting behind someone, who was too, so with every landed kick and knee we screamed “oooi!” Thai-style! 😀 This was so cool! 😀

The plus side was, the girls entered the ring wearing a mongkol and going OVER the ropes!!!!! 😀 I was even shouting a little bit YESSSSS!! when they did it 😀 I saw there was a little commotion around it as during the K1 and MMA fights the fighter were entering through the middle ropes, but here they were wearing a mongkol, so NOT THIS TIME! 😀

It seemed like there was going to be a ram muay, as they entered with the mongkol, but after all not. During the first round they were playing some slow ram muay music, but then they turned it off. Oh bummer. I thing they need to work on that! 🙂

International participation

What is huge for such a young promotion is that they invited fighters from outside of Poland! There were a few girls the Uraine, Lattvia, Holland, Brazil, Germany!

Annysa from Holland, showed everyone what Holland K1 is all about did an amazing job dominating her opponent!

I love the fact that the promotion is reaching out to find new as well as experienced fighters from Europe. It’s a huge opportunity for the local fighters as well as the local audience to see high level female fighters and to show them what female fighting is all about!!! 😀

Gala attractions

During breaks between the fights the organizers made sure noone would get bored.

Before the fights started there was a lenghty video with features from previous events and you could get pumped up for the coming fights.

The fighters were greated by a local rapper singing a song composed for this occasion (well, I’m not into rap, so I thought the song was cheesy, but it’s still an attractions) _ Drużyna Mistrzów.

One of the sponsors – Endorfina wear – organized a fashion show presenting their newest collection. They are desinging sports wear for women, as well as men. The downside is, their size chart ends at L 😦 So I won’t be buying anything from them anytime soon, even though I LOVED the colors and some of the styles!! I can’t speak abut the quality of the clothes, but they look comfy and wearable.

During the fashion show a female rapper – Rena – was also presenting her songs. She has a unique style that really shows off her strenght as a woman. Well, again, I’m not into rap, but I liked her as a performer, she really left an impression.

Before the “main card” there was a longer break and everyone could go to another huge hall for a swedish buffet and grab a bite. I didn’t try any food because I was afraid I’d get an allergic reaction, from what I saw there were a lot of vegetable-based small bites as well as other stuff. There were a lot of people eating, so it was probably good 🙂 Still, so nice!

You could also see some cool cars up-close

Ring boys?

So the thing is, it always felt weird to me seeing almost-naked ring girls carrying the ring number sign around the ring before female fights. It felt inappropriate to me. Ring girls were invented to please the male audience, based on the saying that sex sells. Well, it also feels inappropriate for me during male fights, but that’s because I’m like that.

If we would go with the concept that on male fights you have ring girls, it’s kinda logical that on female fights you have ring boys, right?

Ladies Fight Night managed to do it in a incredibly tasteful fashion! Yes, it involved half-naked good-looking men, but hey, it’s the same with ring girls! The difference to me between the two is ring girls just go around showing off her boobs and buttocks, where here the men showed off their masculine bodies in a manly manner. They had a number painted on the chest and flexed their muscles 🙂 It’s basically the same what they would do at a bodybuilding competiotion, so nothing wrong here!

The best part was that the fighters were assisted by bare-chested bodybuilders that walked out behind them and hold the rope for them. I think it was a really nice and gentlemanly gesture. It happens a lot that the corner isn’t ready to open the ropes for the fighter for whatever reasons, so by providing a gentlemen with a sole purpose of holding the rope for the fighter is a brilliant idea. Personally for me it wouldn’t matter if he had a t-shirt on or not and as far as I know, most guys who have a body to show off would go bare chested rather than not 😉

—-

I ended the night going home around 2 am and discovering that on one bumpy road my exhaust in the car broke off and was hanging sadily. Monday morning, first thing I do, I’ll visit the mechanic 😉